Jael McHenry blogs on food, writing, and writing about food.

February 26, 2010

the process of re-vision

It's been a while since I've done a book news update, and partially, that's because there hasn't been much book news to share. I was in a holding pattern for a while. I knew my editor's revisions were coming, so I took time away from the manuscript, hoping that would help me see it more clearly when the time came.

Vision, to see. Re-vision, to see anew.

It's not like I've paid no attention to Ginny and her family in the four months since the manuscript sold. The book has certainly been on my mind. (Oh, pretty much constantly.) And I've been working with my awesome writers' group, which has been critiquing a big chunk of text every few weeks, and providing really helpful insights.

But I felt like once I got started with edits, I wouldn't be able to keep track. The book has already gone through so many revisions, I sometimes forget what's in THIS book as opposed to what was in it at one time. So I let it sit, piled up the critique pages, took a lot of notes, and waited for my edit letter to come in.

It's in. It's time. Here goes the re-vision.

What needs to be changed? Everything, and nothing. It's funny. Whenever I go into a critique session, on some level, I still hope the reader says "There's nothing I'd change about this." That's not what a critique group is for, not at all, but still, that's a little bit of how I feel. But with my editor's changes, there wasn't a shred of that. I wanted edits. I wanted hard questions to be asked. Holes to be poked. Issues to be raised. Because as long as I've been writing, every manuscript has always been a snapshot. A draft could be finished, but the book was never finished.

Obviously, this book is different. Because it's being published. So! I need vision like I've never had before.